TRADINGLOCAL – THEATRE IN SHOPS, STAPLEHILL

Brilliantly simple and truly inspired, TRADINGLOCAL brings together writers, actors, shops, shoppers and volunteers for a glorious celebration of independent shops. It started in Bedminster when SOS’s Sheila Hannon ran a series of writing workshops, creating 18 new plays for 18 shops and performed by 6 actors in February 2009.

Audiences said, ‘superb event, truly innovative and imaginative’ and shops said, ‘Lots of new people came in who’d never been in here before.’ A coproduction with Exeter’s Northcott Theatre created 15 new pieces for Exeter shops in November 2009. Earlier this year TRADINGLOCAL was in Westbury‐on‐Trym and Brislington with 18 new pieces of work in each.

Staple Hill Community Partnership and Taste Food Festival invited SOS to create a new version for Staple Hill. It had to be ready for the Food and Drink Festival, the schedule was tight, and there was no time for workshops. We looked as the shops, the scripts we already had, and came up with today’s programme: pieces from Bedminster, Exeter, Westbury‐on‐Trym and Brislington. There’s one new piece today: Christine Roberts’s Recipes for Eternity: originally written for Brislington we couldn’t do it there as the restaurant/venue closed a few weeks before the event. It’s great to do it today.

This weekend Show of Strength bring objects in Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum to life and showcase writing by local people.

Watch a series of 12 five-minute monologues performed in the museum’s galleries, close to the objects which inspired them. All the monologues were written and developed in a series of workshops run by Show of Strength in March and April this year. Join us on Saturday and Sunday and prepare to see museum objects in a completely new light.